Neither faction was strong enough
to destroy the other, and so after ten years of continual
fighting, history recorded a long ineffectual list of surprises
and ambushes, of raids and skirmishes, of towns taken and retaken,
of alternate victory and defeat, in which neither party could
claim a supremacy. It mattered nothing that Montfort and Blois
had both disappeared from the scene, the one dead and the other
taken by the English. Their wives caught up the swords which had
dropped from the hands of their lords, and the long struggle went
on even more savagely than before.
In the south and east the Blois faction held the country, and
Nantes the capital was garrisoned and occupied by a strong French
army. In the north and west the Montfort party prevailed, for the
island kingdom was at their back and always fresh sails broke the
northern sky-line bearing adventurers from over the channel.
Between these two there lay a broad zone comprising all the center
of the country which was a land of blood and violence, where no
law prevailed save that of the sword. From end to end it was
dotted with castles, some held for one side, some for the other,
and many mere robber strongholds, the scenes of gross and
monstrous deeds, whose brute owners, knowing that they could never
be called to account, made war upon all mankind, and wrung with
rack and with flame the last shilling from all who fell into their
savage hands.
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